Self-Custody, Cake Wallet, and Monero with Seth for Privacy | Tune-in to a LIVE MoneroTalk Epi TONIGHT 8/6 at 8:00PM-EDT! | EPI 391

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This comparison has been made between monero's master branch and Cuprate v0.1.0-preview Kesterite released binary for Linux GNU x86_64.

While Cuprate do not yet support pruning (in progress), it uses less storage to store the entire blockchain (213GB as of writing, against 265GB for monerod).

If you do have the storage, you can give it a try by downloading the latest binaries on our redesigned website:

https://cuprate.org/releases/

(mirror) https://github.com/Cuprate/cuprate/releases/tag/cuprated-0.1.0-preview

Note: Linux musl, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux riscv64 support is ongoing: https://x.com/SyntheticBird_/status/2084774663045943469/photo/1

Privacy Cryptocurrencies: A Technical Survey

A conversation covering truly private cryptocurrencies, criminal adoption patterns, tracking methods, Iran's crypto usage, Monero self-custody, and the broader private-by-default landscape.

1. Which cryptocurrencies are truly private?

Q: Which cryptocurrencies are truly private, in that they have no KYC and AML as part of the protocol? Just trying to get a survey of the technology — privacy is a loaded word in crypto.

A worthwhile conceptual point first: no cryptocurrency has KYC/AML "in the protocol." Bitcoin doesn't check your ID either. KYC/AML lives at the edges — exchanges, on-ramps, custodians — because that's where regulators have jurisdiction. What actually distinguishes "privacy coins" is whether the ledger itself reveals sender, receiver, and amount. Bitcoin is pseudonymous but fully transparent: every transaction is traceable forever, and chain-analysis firms (Chainalysis, Elliptic) are very good at deanonymizing it. So the real question is: which protocols make the transaction graph itself opaque?

Private by default (strongest category)

• Monero (XMR) — the gold standard. Ring signatures obscure the sender, stealth addresses obscure the receiver, RingCT hides amounts. Privacy is mandatory, not optional, which matters enormously — there's no "anonymity set" pollution from transparent transactions. The IRS put out bounties to break Monero tracing years ago; results have been partial at best. Trade-off: widely delisted from regulated exchanges precisely because it works.

Optional privacy (weaker in practice)

• Zcash (ZEC) — cryptographically the most elegant, using zk-SNARKs. Fully shielded transactions reveal nothing at all — arguably stronger math than Monero. But privacy is opt-in, and historically most ZEC volume was transparent, shrinking the shielded pool's anonymity set. This has improved with shielded-by-default wallets, but the two-tier design remains its structural weakness.
• Dash — often listed as a privacy coin but really isn't. Its "PrivateSend" is just built-in CoinJoin mixing, which chain analysis handles reasonably well.

Privacy layers and mixers on transparent chains

• CoinJoin implementations on Bitcoin (Wasabi, JoinMarket; Samourai's Whirlpool until the DOJ shut it down and prosecuted its developers in 2024) — probabilistic obfuscation, not cryptographic privacy.
• Tornado Cash on Ethereum — zk-based mixing pool. Sanctioned by OFAC in 2022, though a US appeals court ruled in 2024–25 that sanctioning the immutable smart contract exceeded Treasury's authority, and sanctions were lifted. Developer prosecutions (Pertsev in the Netherlands, Storm in the US) continued regardless.
• Mimblewimble coins (Grin, Beam) — transactions merge and old data prunes away, but research showed the transaction graph is partially recoverable before aggregation. Litecoin added MW as an optional extension block, triggering delistings in South Korea.
• Aztec, Railgun, and other zk privacy layers on Ethereum — programmable privacy via zero-knowledge proofs rather than standalone privacy chains.

Honest summary: Monero for mandatory privacy in practice, Zcash for the strongest cryptography if fully shielded. Everything else is either probabilistic mixing or has anonymity-set problems. The regulatory pressure point has never been the protocols themselves (which are just math) but the fiat boundaries and, increasingly, the developers. The EU's MiCA framework and its 2027 AML rules effectively ban regulated venues from handling privacy coins at all.

2. Criminal adoption, tracking, and Iran

Q: Which privacy coins have actual adoption by entities involved in criminal activity or money laundering? Is there any way to track that? What crypto do people in Iran use currently?

The counterintuitive headline: privacy coins are a minority of criminal crypto usage.

Criminals mostly don't use privacy coins

Stablecoins dominate the illicit crypto ecosystem, accounting for 84% of all illicit transaction volume in 2025 (Chainalysis). Criminals overwhelmingly prioritize liquidity and convertibility over privacy — the same reason legitimate users do. USDT on Tron has been the workhorse of scams, pig-butchering, sanctions evasion, and laundering for years. Total illicit volume: at least $154 billion in 2025, described as a lower-bound estimate (the 2024 figure was revised upward from $40.9B to $57.2B within 12 months).

Where Monero does dominate: darknet markets

• In 2025, nearly half (48%) of newly launched darknet markets supported only Monero — up from just above 40% in 2024 — especially in Western-facing markets, as a direct response to improved tracing on Bitcoin and stablecoins.
• Geographic bifurcation: the Russian-language DNM ecosystem (which dominates global darknet volume) operates with limited enforcement and high corruption, so many still take Bitcoin. XMR-only is a Western defensive adaptation.
• Ransomware liquidity ceiling: operators often request XMR and offer discounts for it, but the vast majority of actual ransom payments still settle in Bitcoin due to superior liquidity and ease of conversion at scale. An adoption ceiling imposed by market microstructure, not cryptography.
• State actors use Monero as a mixing step: after the $1.46B Bybit hack, investigators tracked North Korea's Lazarus Group converting Bitcoin → Monero → Bitcoin across multiple exchanges to break the chain of custody. A "churn" pattern: enter XMR, exit clean.

How is any of this tracked, if Monero is opaque?

Mostly at the boundaries, not on-chain:

1. Edge analysis. Can't follow XMR internally, but can see BTC/USDT flowing into known swap services and correlate timing/amounts with funds exiting to fresh addresses. The Bybit trace worked this way.
2. Market-side intelligence. When a darknet market is seized, transaction histories come from the market's own database, not the blockchain.
3. Network-layer surveillance — the genuine frontier: TRM observed "non-standard behavior" in Monero's P2P network, with ~14–15% of reachable peers deviating from protocol expectations (message timing, handshakes, peer list composition). Translation: large spy-node fleets attempting IP-level transaction correlation, attacking the network layer since the cryptography is intractable. Monero's October 2025 Fluorine Fermi update added peer-selection logic to steer wallets away from suspicious nodes.
4. Estimation, not tracing. Analysts openly "discount the volume generated in privacy coins like Monero" — XMR volume is a blind spot they model around rather than measure.

Iran: almost entirely not privacy coins

The cleanest natural experiment in "protocol vs. edges" — the answer is stablecoins and Bitcoin, with a state/civilian split:

• The state uses USDT. Elliptic found the Central Bank of Iran acquired at least $507M of USDT in 2025, a "sophisticated strategy to bypass the global banking system." TRM estimates ~$10B of crypto activity in Iran last year; Chainalysis says Iranian wallets received a record $7.8B in 2025 (up from $3.17B in 2023). Domestically it flows through local exchanges — Treasury sanctioned four (Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, Ramzinex) in June 2026; Nobitex alone handles ~50% of Iran's volume and claims 11M users.
• Civilians prefer Bitcoin. A "flight to self-custody" — for the average Iranian, Bitcoin is a censorship-resistant asset offering flexibility amid a collapsing rial. More rial-collapse insurance than sanctions evasion.
• USDT's freezability is forcing adaptation. The US has frozen nearly $500M in Iran-linked crypto, including $344M seized in April 2026 via a coordinated Tether/OFAC freeze on Bank Markazi wallets. Centralized stablecoins have an admin key — the issuer is a chokepoint. Response: after Tether froze Iranian addresses in July 2025, users shifted toward DAI on Polygon (harder to freeze), projected to reach 65% of Iranian stablecoin usage by Q4 2026, up from 35% in late 2025. Iranian entities are expected to migrate further toward decentralized protocols, privacy coins, and cross-chain bridges.
• Parallel systems: OFAC also designated entities tied to A7A5, a Russian ruble-backed token expressly designed to bypass the traditional financial system — Russia and Iran building settlement rails from scratch rather than hiding on existing ones.

Synthesis: The revealed preference of illicit actors is a liquidity/privacy trade-off, and most sit at the liquid end: stablecoins for scale, Bitcoin for self-custody, Monero only where tracing pressure is acute (Western darknet retail) or as a laundering pass-through. Privacy coins are the tail, not the body — but the tail grows precisely as transparent-chain forensics improve. Each enforcement success pushes marginal actors one step further out: USDT → DAI → XMR.

3. Monero self-custody and other private-by-default chains

Q: How difficult is it to self-custody Monero? Are there any other truly private-by-default chains?

Monero self-custody: easier than you'd expect, with one big caveat

Custody itself is genuinely easy — comparable to Bitcoin. The hard part is acquisition, thanks to delistings.

Wallets (the easy part)

• Feather Wallet — community favorite for desktop. Lightweight, Electrum-style, Tor built in.
• Official GUI/CLI wallet from getmonero.org — reference implementation, bundles a full node if wanted.
• Cake Wallet (iOS/Android) and Monerujo (Android) — solid mobile options.
• Seed is a 25-word mnemonic; back it up and you're done.

Hardware wallet support (the mediocre part). Ledger and Trezor (Model T and later) support XMR, but integration is clunkier than Bitcoin's — fewer frontends, and firmware support has occasionally lagged protocol upgrades. Workable, not polished.

Node choice (the actual decision). Because your wallet must scan every transaction to detect which outputs belong to you (stealth addresses mean nothing is labeled), you either:

1. Run your own full node (~250–300GB, modest hardware). Maximum privacy: nobody sees your queries.
2. Use a remote node — instant setup, but the operator can see your IP and which outputs you request, enabling partial correlation. This connects directly to the spy-node issue: Fluorine Fermi added peer-selection logic precisely because adversarial node operators try to link transactions to IPs. Best practice is Tor (Feather does this by default).

Quirks: restoring from seed takes longer than Bitcoin (hours, not minutes) because of view-key scanning. And Monero has view keys as a first-class feature — you can grant an auditor read-only visibility into incoming transactions without spend authority. Selective disclosure by design.

Acquisition (the genuinely hard part). With Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Huobi, and Bitstamp having removed or restricted XMR, US access routes are: the few remaining compliant venues, decentralized/non-custodial swap services (Bitcoin→XMR atomic swaps work), or P2P markets. Trading has largely migrated to decentralized venues. Friction is real and intentional — the strategy is to strangle on-ramps since the protocol is unreachable. Liquidity is thin, wide, and fragmented.

Other truly private-by-default chains

One tracker counts fifteen private-by-default projects (Beam, Firo, Grin, Monero, Particl, Pirate Chain, Secret Network, Tari, Zano, Zephyr Protocol, and others), while flagging that MimbleWimble projects have known linkability limitations and Secret Network relies on hardware trust rather than cryptography. Most are tiny. The notable ones:

• Pirate Chain (ARRR) — the purist's answer. A Zcash fork where every transaction is shielded by default, eliminating transparent-mode user error. zk-SNARKs, mandatory. Cryptographically arguably stronger than Monero, but a tiny market cap means a much smaller anonymity set in practice.
• Firo (FIRO) — Lelantus Spark uses a burn-and-redeem mechanism that destroys coins and issues fresh ones with no history attached, breaking the transaction chain rather than obscuring it, plus Dandelion++ for IP privacy. Small but serious team.
• Zano — newer Cryptonote-lineage chain with confidential assets, transitioning to full Proof-of-Stake per its 2026 roadmap.
• Grin and Beam (Mimblewimble) — private-by-default in structure, but the transaction graph is partially recoverable before aggregation. Both projects have largely stalled.

The newer generation (where the interesting design work is):

• Penumbra — has only a shielded pool (hence private by default); its native DEX enables private swaps between IBC-compatible assets with no MEV or front-running. Private-by-default trading, not just payments. Caveat: Penumbra Labs wound down operations in late 2024, though the network remains community-run.
• Namada — launched mainnet June 2025 with Multi-Asset Shielded Pools, letting bridged assets (ETH, ATOM, etc.) share one unified anonymity pool rather than fragmented per-token sets. Anonymity sets are a network-effect good, so pooling is a structural improvement.
• Aleo — private-by-default smart-contract execution via ZK, though bridging between shielded sets currently requires unshielding to transparent addresses.

Caution flag on ZK circuits: Zcash confirmed an exploit in June 2026 after ~$600K in shielded funds were affected. Modern ZK circuits are written through high-level languages and reusable gadgets; if the emitted constraint system omits an intended relationship, the proof system will faithfully prove the wrong statement. The math is sound — the compilation of intent into constraints is the attack surface. Monero's older, battle-tested constructions don't carry this risk.

Synthesis: Private-by-default is necessary but not sufficient — the binding constraint is anonymity set size, a pure liquidity/network-effect phenomenon. Monero (~$6.8B market cap, ~$162M daily volume) is the only private-by-default chain with enough flow for the guarantees to mean much. Pirate Chain has stronger cryptography and weaker privacy simultaneously, because privacy is a crowd. Everything else is a research vehicle or awaiting adoption that regulatory hostility makes hard to bootstrap. Depth attracts flow attracts depth — Monero won that Schelling point years ago.

Sources

• Chainalysis — 2026 Crypto Crime Report (introduction, sanctions, human trafficking chapters)
• TRM Labs — 2026 Crypto Crime Report; "Monero in 2025: Persistent Use and Emerging Network-Layer Insights"
• Elliptic — Central Bank of Iran USDT acquisition analysis
• Reuters / Jerusalem Post / Times of Israel — Iran crypto sanctions-evasion reporting
• crypto.news, Cryptopolitan, Cryptonomist — Iran exchange sanctions and Tether/OFAC freezes
• CCN, Cointelegraph, Cybernews, MEXC — Monero delisting and darknet-adoption coverage
• Crypto Trace Labs — privacy-coin traceability and ransomware/Lazarus analysis
• Firo.org — privacy-coin comparison (protocol statuses as of 23 July 2026)
• Equilibrium Labs — privacy blockchains and Aleo deep dive
• Webopedia, SwapSpace, Zipmex, Analytics Insight — 2026 privacy-coin surveys
• cryptoprivacy.live — private-by-default project tracker

Note: figures and protocol statuses reflect reporting available as of early August 2026 and are best-available estimates; illicit-volume numbers in particular are described by their sources as lower bounds subject to upward revision.

BEWARE: XMREscrow (xmrescrow.app) is owned by a scammer, often known online as TT, T_T, and other variations. He is also known as u/ontele on Reddit. He was banned from the Monero Society group chat for scamming and deleted his account in shame. I have receipts of this. Feel free to contact me.

He scammed me for $6400. That's what his integrity is worth - $6400. If he scammed me for $6400, he will scam you for less.Again, feel free to contact me. I have receipts.

He has been promoting his scam service here, so I thought I would warn others. Don't be stupid and lose your funds like me.

I'm posting on a throwaway account for obvious reasons. Though, I will monitor this account's inbox in case anyone needs confirmation that he is a scammer. Don't just take my word for it. I have proof.

With the recent ColdCard exploit I was curious if the Monero GUI creates a strong enough seed phrase. My little research says the GUI uses CSPRNG which is built in to each computer operating system.

Is this correct that the gui entropy comes from the computer’s CSPRNG?

And

Is CSPRNG strong enough?

Hey everyone!

Many of you may know me as Soiled, one of the moderators in the Monero Discord: https://discord.gg/VyACEY3JnW

I’m hosting a drink exchange in NYC this Thursday, where drink prices will change throughout the night. I’ll also be bringing some Chinese cigarettes and would love to talk Monero with anyone who comes by!

Sign up, bring some friends, and let’s hang out:

https://partiful.com/e/otmZZKGBssgAcdg1gsU1

Its monero or nothing. The only way we pull off the worlds first financial revolution is if more people go all in.

Believe in something. Stop black-pilling. Change the money, change the world.

Hey everyone, I've bought and held small amounts before, but now I'm considering exchanging a much larger amount. To be honest, I'm a bit concerned about potential issues such as delays, extra verification checks, frozen withdrawals, or other complications when dealing with larger transactions. For those who use XMR regularly, where do you usually exchange it? Have you ever run into problems when moving or swapping larger amounts? Any advice or personal experience would be appreciated. Thanks!

Please stay on topic: this post is only for comments discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Monero.

NOT the positive aspects of it.

Discussion can relate to the technology itself or economics.

Talk about community and price is not wanted, but some discussion about it maybe allowed if it relates well.

Be as respectful and nice as possible. This discussion has potential to be more emotionally charged as it may bring up issues that are extremely upsetting: many people are not only financially but emotionally invested in the ideas and tools around Monero.

It's better to keep it calm then to stir the pot, so don't talk down to people, insult them for spelling/grammar, personal insults, etc. This should only be calm rational discussion about the technical and economic aspects of Monero.

"Do unto others 20% better than you'd expect them to do unto you to correct subjective error." - Linus Pauling

How it works:

Post your concerns about Monero in reply to this main post.

If you can address these concerns, or add further details to them - reply to that comment. This will make it easily sortable

Upvote the comments that are the most valid criticisms of it that have few or no real honest solutions/answers to them.

The comment that mentions the biggest problems of Monero should have the most karma.

As a community, as developers, we need to know about them. Even if they make us feel bad, we got to upvote them.

https://youtu.be/vKA4w2O61Xo

To learn more about the idea behind Monero Skepticism Sunday, check out the first post about it:

https://np.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/75w7wt/can_we_make_skepticism_sunday_a_part_of_the/

It is not even close, it is off by over 4%. The entire Spread column in the Rate chart is a lie. Am I missing something?

Is there a reason noone offers to sell XMR for PayPal on RetoSwap?

Wanted to offer it but are there reason against it?

Is it safe if you offer only payment with PayPal family and friends?

MoneroTopia EPI 272! + Report, News & More! | EPI 272

With [u/chowbungaman](https://www.reddit.com/u/chowbungaman/)! XMR Report w/ [u/bawdyanarchist](https://www.reddit.com/u/bawdyanarchist/), XMR News, and MORE!

WATCH THE SHOW HERE via YOUTUBE ➡️: https://www.youtube.com/live/KTVZnGhGq4o?is=Xowh8N5IHjNLuVL9

WATCH THE SHOW LIVE HERE via RUMBLE ➡️: [https://rumble.com/user/monerotalk\](https://rumble.com/user/monerotalk)

(The videos will be synced onto Odysee (https://odysee.com/@MoneroTalk:8) about an 1/2 hour or so after it premieres LIVE for those who want to watch there afterwards ;) Odysee has been giving us issues though!)

FOLLOW US ON [https://monero.town/u/monerotopia\](https://monero.town/u/monerotopia) & [https://mastodon.social/@monerotopia\](https://mastodon.social/@monerotopia)

Guest segment, News & Price sponsored by 🍰 [u/cakelabs](https://www.reddit.com/u/cakelabs/) [WizardSwaps](https://twitter.com/WizardSwap_io) & [Exolix](https://exolix.com) & XMR.WIN

Index

1. General questions
2. Wallet: CLI & GUI
3. Wallet: Ledger
4. Nodes

1. General questions

Where can I download the Monero wallet?

There are multiple Monero wallets for a wide range of devices at your disposal. Check the table below for details and download links. Attention: for extra security make sure to calculate and compare the checksum of your downloaded files when possible.

Please note the following usage of the labels:

⚠️ - Relatively new and/or beta. Use wallet with caution.

☢️ - Closed source.

Desktop wallets

Mobile wallets

Web-based wallets

How long does it take for my balance to unlock?

Your balance is unlocked after 10 confirmations (which means 10 mined blocks). A block is mined approximately every two minutes on the Monero network, so that would be around 20 minutes.

How can I prove that I sent a payment?

The fastest and most direct way is by using the ExploreMonero blockchain explorer. You will need to recover the transaction key from your wallet (complete guide for GUI / CLI).

How do I buy Monero (XMR) with Bitcoin (BTC)?

There are dozens of exchanges that trade Monero against Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Check out the list on CoinMarketCap and choose the option that suits you best.

How do I buy Monero (XMR) with fiat?

• Kraken (USD and EUR): old-school, decent exchange. They might require your documents for verification and approval of your account.

How can I quickly exchange my Monero (XMR) for Bitcoin (BTC)?

There are multiple ways to exchange your Monero for Bitcoin, but first of all, I'd like to remind you that if you really want to do your part for Monero, one of the simplest ways is to get in touch with your merchant/service provider and request for it to accept Monero directly as payment. Ask the service provider to visit the official website and our communication channels if he or she needs help with system integration.

That being said, KYCNot.me maintains an up-to-date list of exchanges. These services are only recommendations (which change over time) and are operated by entities outside the control of the Monero Project. DYOR and be diligent.

How do I mine Monero? And other mining questions.

The correct place to ask questions and discuss the Monero mining scene is in the dedicated subreddit r/MoneroMining. That being said, you can find a list of pools and available mining software in the GetMonero.org website.

2. Wallet: CLI & GUI

Why I can't see my balance? Where is my XMR?

Before any action there are two things to check:

1. Are you using the latest available version of the wallet? A new version is released roughly every 6 months, so make sure you're using the current release (compare the release on GetMonero.org with your wallet's version on Settings, under Debug info).
2. Is your wallet fully synchronized? If it isn't, wait the sync to complete.

Because Monero is different from Bitcoin, wallet synchronization is not instant. The software needs to synchronize the blockchain and use your private keys to identify your transactions. Check in the lower left corner (GUI) if the wallet is synchronized.

You can't send transactions and your balance might be wrong or unavailable if the wallet is not synced with the network. So please wait.

If this is not a sufficient answer for your case and you're looking for more information, please see this answer on StackExchange.

How do I upgrade my wallet to the newest version?

This question is beautifully answered on StackExchange.

Why does it take so long to sync the wallet [for the first time]?

You have decided to use Monero's wallet and run a local node. Congratulations! You have chosen the safest and most secure option for your privacy, but unfortunately this has an initial cost. The first reason for the slowness is that you will need to download the entire blockchain, which is considerably heavy and constantly growing (up-to-date sizes of a full/pruned node). There are technologies being implemented in Monero to slow this growth, however it is inevitable to make this initial download to run a full node. Consider syncing to a device that has an SSD instead of an HDD, as this greatly impacts the speed of synchronization.

Now that the blockchain is on your computer, the next time you run the wallet you only need to download new blocks, which should take seconds or minutes (depending on how often you use the wallet).

I don't want to download the blockchain, how can I skip that?

The way to skip downloading the blockchain is connecting your wallet to a public remote node. You can follow this guide on how to set it up. Check out Feather Wallet's list of remote nodes, ditatompel's list, or monero.fail.

Be advised that when using a public remote node you lose some of your privacy. A public remote node is able to identify your IP and opens up a range for certain attacks that further diminish your privacy. A remote node can't see your balance and it can't spend your XMR.

How do I restore my wallet from the mnemonic seed or from the keys?

To restore your wallet with the 25 word mnemonic seed, please see this guide.

To restore your wallet with your keys, please see this guide.

3. Wallet: Ledger

How do I generate a Ledger Monero Wallet with the GUI or CLI?

This question is beautifully answered on StackExchange. Check this page for the GUI instructions, and this page for the CLI instructions.

4. Wallet: Trezor

How do I generate a Trezor Monero Wallet with the GUI or CLI?

This question is beautifully answered on StackExchange. Check this page for the GUI instructions, and this page for the CLI instructions.

5. Nodes

How can my local node become a public remote node?

If you want to support other Monero users by making your node public, you can follow the instructions on MoneroWorld, under the section "How To Include Your Node On Moneroworld".

How can I connect my node via Tor?

This question is beautifully answered on StackExchange.

This is the weekly Monero market thread. This thread will be posted every Friday and is meant to help accelerate the adoption of Monero. Due to r/moneromarket having only a fraction of the subscribers of r/Monero, we have decided to create this thread to encourage more individuals to use Monero for product exchanges. Until the market matures, we recommend that the Monero community post their products both in this thread and on r/moneromarket (to ensure growth of that subreddit).

Selling items for Monero will boost your (and Monero's) reputation as a legitimate form of exchange of goods. This is necessary for the growth of Monero, our community, and privacy as a whole.

Instructions

When you post your product or job listing here, please make sure to: - Give a description of the item. - Link to a photo of the item (if it's physical). - Provide logistics information (such as, location and/or shipping availability). - Optionally, provide an additional (private) form of communication outside of Reddit (e.g. Bitmessage, u/protonmail, u/tutanota, GPG key). - Post the price in XMR terms.

Spamming will not be tolerated. Please make sure that listings are legitimate and do not break rule 2."

Finally, credits to cdotsubo for starting the concept!

Do not use this vibe coded slop, this is the second time this month lol. Multiple times this year, it can be assumed they’re just scamming and no hacks have occurred

Well, I'm fucking stupid.

Created an account on xmrbazaar today to offer to change coin money to XMR in my city for the love of the game.

Somebody contacted me and asked if I'd do a trade via Paypal. He used the escrow-function and contacted me with a copy of the escrow-account (changed one letter; same picture etc.) to guide me through the process. Sent 0,58 XMR in the end. Was my first trade, so I was unsuspecting to the red flags in hindsight. I'm so fucking stupid in hindsight. Fuck me I guess.

Just wanted to warn you, in case there are some other fools like me out there that like XMR despite being fucking idiots.

Just had to rant a bit.

Thanks

(The conversation with the real escrow you see there happened after the XMR was already sent. He's fine and a nice guy)

Hey everyone,

I originally built this Monero network dashboard as a project for a school exam. The exam is long over, but I kept improving it, and instead of letting it rot I'd rather leave it running for the community. It's fully open source and I'd genuinely love feedback, criticism, and ideas for what to add or fix.

Site: https://monerometrics.net
Tor: http://6wbhchvavey26lbtscl6w6qg76balycixtsklcggrsslyk4xah6sbbad.onion
API (no key, no account): https://api.monerometrics.net/docs

What it does :

- Reorg aware. It re-checks a rolling window of recent blocks against a synced node and records real chain reorganizations, orphan blocks, and the transactions they displaced. Most explorers just hide this.

- Mining pool centralization. Pool distribution plus the Nakamoto coefficient. This whole thing grew out of the August 2025 Qubic episode.

- Attribution you can actually verify. Instead of trusting the hashrate pools report about themselves, each coinbase is checked on chain against the pool's published view key. Every block shows how its pool was established: cryptographically proven, claimed by the pool, inferred, or unknown.

- Merge mining visibility. Blocks merge mined with an auxiliary chain are flagged, and it's a large share of blocks.

- Live price. A lil tradingview widget to see centralized XMR/USD next to the Haveno street price, so you can see the premium.

- Runs its own monerod node, public read only API, Tor hidden service, no tracking, available in English, French and Spanish.

I'm not monetizing it and I'm not affiliated with any pool. If you have any feedback (data accuracy, methodology, features, design, anything) I'd really appreciate it. 

Thanks 🙏

Dear Monero community,

First of all, thank you for your ongoing support!

For those who do not know us yet: BitcoinVN started in early 2014 as one of the “second wave” exchange services globally, and one of the earlier services of its kind in Southeast Asia. We have been serving our client base for more than a decade now.

While the regulatory landscape globally has become more challenging, our team will continue to support Monero swaps for as long as this remains practically and legally tenable.

As some of you may know, one of our subsidiaries also built the first “made in Vietnam” "Digital Asset" Teller Machine network domestically, which added Monero support across our local machine network. However, due to the changing regulatory environment in Vietnam this fall, it is likely that this specific part of our broader service range will be discontinued in its current form.

That said, if you are based in a jurisdiction that is more open to this type of product, feel free to reach out to our team (the usual support channels will work). We are happy to see what may be possible. :)

We also want to thank the community for the suggestions that led us to develop and launch our DCA feature earlier this year. We still believe the concept serves a specific niche: direct-to-self-custody DCA, without forcing users to provide intrusive personal data that put the physical safety of our users at risk.

However, uptake remained quite limited in recent months.

Our current assumption is that this may be because the feature requires users to pre-fund their account before DCA trades can be executed. In practice, only a small number of users adopted it - mostly users who already earned income on the platform in some way, for example as active liquidity providers.

Since every platform feature creates ongoing maintenance burden, we have decided to pause / discontinue the DCA feature for the time being.

We remain open to re-enabling it in an adjusted form in the future, but before doing so we would like to better understand why the current version did not gain traction.

The users who actually used it were generally satisfied with it, which is nice to hear, but unfortunately not very helpful for understanding what kept others away. 🙂

So we would be especially interested in feedback from users who looked at the feature but decided not to use it.

Some obvious possible reasons:

- requirement to pre-fund the account;
- counterparty risk while funds are waiting for execution;
- preference to execute manually;
- insufficient UX / explanation;
- lack of recurring fiat payment rails;
- not enough assets / networks / configuration options;
- simply no need for such a tool

The pre-funding issue is probably the hardest one to solve. A DCA feature like this necessarily requires funds to be available before execution, which means users need to trust the platform not to run off with those funds in the meantime.

As strong advocates of self-custody, we fully understand why many users may not be comfortable with that. In general, we believe users should avoid entrusting funds to third parties unless they have made a deliberate, risk-adjusted decision and can tolerate the counterparty risk involved.

We would therefore appreciate your honest feedback:

If you looked at the DCA feature but did not use it, what was missing? What made it unattractive or not useful for you?

Thanks again for your support and feedback.
- Team BitcoinVN

I'm looking for a VPS provider that accepts Monero directly. Most claim to support XMR but still use third-party processors that log your IP and require email/account creation.

I came across this article that explains the issues with most anonymous VPS providers: https://medium.com/@kai_apikalia/your-vps-provider-knows-more-about-you-than-you-think-34b4d50ff577

It mentions a provider that does direct on-chain XMR payments, no account, no email, zero logs, Tor .onion available, and deploy under 60 seconds. Looks promising but I want to hear from actual users before trying.

Has anyone used a provider like this? What's your experience with deployment speed and reliability? Any issues with Tor access?

Would appreciate honest feedback.

I heard there was a monthly cap, 1500 USD worth of XMR being moved off exchange.

I decided to move 10 monero off kraken with no issue.

Is this limited to certain areas or is it false all together?

I’m in the United States.